Israellycool

A day after US President George Bush expressed his confidence in the creation of a palestinian state, palestinian terrorists expressed their confidence that terrorism will gain them even more concessions.

Two Israeli security guards were shot dead overnight Friday in a shooting attack at the Nitzanei Shalom industrial zone, near the West Bank city of Tul Karm.

The bodies of the two middle-aged men were discovered Friday morning in a factory where in the industrial zone, on the boundary between Israeli territory and the Palestinian-ruled city.

Security officials said the attack was terror related. They suspect a militant from the Islamic Jihad organization infiltrated the industrial zone and opened fire at close range.

The victims were named as Shimon Mizrahi, 59, of Beit Hefer, and Eli Wasserman, 50, of Alfei Menashe.

The two guards were apparently screening Palestinians workers coming in when the gunman approached them, opened fire and then escaped, the military said.

“A Palestinian shot dead two guards at the security-check area at the entrance to the industrial zone,” an Israel Defense Forces spokeswoman said.

“We are treating this as a terrorist attack. It may have come from the outside, but there are also hundreds of Palestinians who work at Nitzanei Oz.”

There were no other casualties reported and no Palestinian militant group immediately claimed responsibility.

Rescue teams pronounced the two men dead on the site. Security officials were searching the area for the gunman, who is believed to have fled into Tul Karm.

Palestinian security officials in Tul Karm said IDF soldiers moved into the West Bank in force after the attack and set up a checkpoint.

Coming soon: palestinian complaining about checkpoints and their inability to work inside Israel.

And in a busy day(so far) for terrorists:

In a separate incident on Friday morning, Palestinians near the West Bank city of Ramallah hurled three firebombs at an Israeli vehicle driving in the area. There were no injuries.

Also Friday, three Qassam rockets fired by Palestinians in Gaza struck southern Ashkelon. One of the rockets hit a cemetery in the south of the city, causing some damage to tombstones.

A fourth Qassam was fired toward Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, in the western Negev.

The Aussie Dave family were at Ashkelon beach yesterday, and jokingly remarked that Qassams would put a dampener on things. Here’s a picture Mrs Aussie Dave took on the way back home, a reminder that none of us are that far from missile range.

Updates:

12:25PM: The Jerusalem Post has this interesting bit of information about the location of the shooting:

The Nitzane Shalom complex was built in 1995. It houses nine factories that provide jobs to many Palestinians from the West Bank.

A cynical exploitation of Israeli goodwill, just like the recent Nahal Oz fuel terminal terror attack.

For the record, Nitzane Shalom means “Buds of peace.”

2:12PM: More on the victims:

Shimon Mizrahi’s widow, Sara, arrived at the terminal after hearing from her sister-in-law that something had happened at the industrial zone. “I had a bad feeling, so I came,” she said, trembling.

She told Ynet that she had asked him not to go to work that day. “I told him to stay home. He was meant to be on vacation today. He shouldn’t have gone to work. This is my nightmare.”

Family members, friends and acquaintances of Eli Wasserman gathered at his home in Alfei Menashe following the attack. Wasserman was the manager of a factory at the industrial zone. He arrived Friday morning to pick up Palestinian workers and guard their entry, and was murdered.

Hisdai Eliezer, head of the Alfei Menashe Local Council, arrived at the family home and said that he had known Wasserman for many years. “Eli’s father was injured in 1968 during his military service, his brother was killed three months later as officer, and now he was killed in a place called ‘Nitzanei Hashalom’ (buds of peace).”

Hisdai added, “For years I have been saying that the industrial zone is one of the places just waiting to see a disaster. There is a gate inside the Palestinian territory, with guards standing and letting Palestinians in.”

Wasserman’s friends said that he was a quiet and shy person, whose family was loved by all the community members. He was survived by his wife, Chaya, and his two children, 30-year-old Ahiad and 28-year-old Michal. His funeral will take place on Sunday at 3 pm at the Netanya cemetery.

4:15PM: In further proof that killing Jews is great for popularity in palestinian areas, Ma’an reports that 5 terror organizations have claimed responsibility for this morning’s shooting attack - including the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, affiliated with Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah.

Five Palestinian resistance factions have claimed responsibility for shooting dead two Israeli security guards in the Tulkarem industrial zone on Friday.

Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Brigades say they carried out the attack in co-ordination with the relatively unknown Al-Awda wa Nidal Brigades and the Ahrar Al-Muthalith Brigades, who are based inside Israel.

Ma’an also has more details on the attack:

A spokesperson telephoned Ma’an and said that three of their members targeted Israeli the security guards, using only one gun. They then escaped.

“The operation was two weeks in the planning and so the brigades rejected the ceasefire talks with Israel by Hamas and other factions,” the spokesperson said.

The military wing of Islamic Jihad, the Al-Quds brigades and the Al-Qassam Brigades the military wing of Hamas, also claimed responsibility for the operation in Tulkarem.

They sent a joint statement to Ma’an giving details of the operation - “At 5.15 am at dawn on Friday one of the resistance fighters was able to reach get into the location disguised as a woman. He went from near Tulkarem to the region of Nitzanei Shalom, which is the industrial zone located between the territory of Tulkarem and the lands of 1948. He then changed into a worker’s uniform and went to the area at 7.17 am at the same time as Palestinian workers enter the factories. The Palestinian youth that shot the guards was slightly injured but managed to escape safely.”

Some more facts to consider next time you hear palestinian women and workers complain about being stopped and checked at checkpoints.

Who would have thought that employing palestinians in a restaurant was a recipe for disaster?

The thwarting of an alarming terror plot was cleared for publication on Thursday, almost three weeks after a joint Shin Bet and police operation led to the arrest of two Palestinian employees of the ‘Grill Express’ restaurant in Ramat Gan.

The men, Eihab Abu Rial and Anas Salum, both 21-year-old residents of the West Bank city of Nablus, had planned to lace dishes served at the establishment with a powerful toxin without odor or taste, in the hopes of killing as many patrons as possible.

The two did not have working permits and were residing in Israel illegally. While in Nablus, they had been recruited to the al-Aqsa Martyr’s Bridges, the military wing of Fatah, under the guidance and funding of Hizbullah.

The men were arrested by police investigators following information obtained by the Shin Bet, several short days before they planned to carry out the attack.

Toxin was to come from West Bank

In their questioning the men told interrogators they were to receive the poison from two operatives in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus – Husseini Salag and Hani Quabi – who are still wanted by security forces.

The white substance is virtually undetectable and affects its victims approximately four hours after being ingested.

Salag, they said, also sought to use them to bring a suicide bomber across the border.

Defense officials say they are concerned Quabi continues to seek the means to carry out an attack in Israel using illegal Palestinian residents.

A similar incident occurred five and a half years ago in Jerusalem. At the time, three Arab residents of east Jerusalem were arrested before their plan to poison Israeli patrons at the Rimon Café in central Jerusalem could be realized (I blogged about it at the time -ed). The three had also planned to carry out a suicide bombing during a right-wing demonstration. The cell had been found to operating under Hamas.

Some four years ago a Fatah cell was arrested in Qalqiliya, the group had been planning to detonate an explosive device encased in HIV-infected blood in a crowded Tel Aviv area.

Learning points:

1. It is probably not a good idea to be employing palestinians.

2. I sometimes understate things. It is a downright irresponsible - if not criminal - thing to do.

3. The same applies to trusting Fatah as a “peace partner,” given they still have a terror arm trying to perpetrate heinous crimes like in this case.

4. As does employing in a restaurant a guy with the first name “Anas”, a last name similar to a food illness, and a eerie resemblance to Admiral Ackbar, a species of Mon Calamari.

Palestine Press Agency reports that one of the “martyrs” that Hamas claimed to have been killed during Wednesday morning’s murder of an IDF soldier was in fact killed in internal Fatah/Hamas clashes, and Hamas brought his body to the area to claim that Israel killed him: (autotranslated):

[Hamas'] Qassam Brigades announced in a press conference Wednesday in Khan Yunis in the martyrdom of Mohamed Fayed Chamie said that one of its leaders were killed during clashes with Israeli special forces and enable the sniper and killed an Israeli soldier east of Khan Younis…

Local sources in the Gaza Strip said that Mohamed Fayed Chamie not in the place in which it was killed, pointing out that while his body was transported to the hospital and his funeral emerged as a refreshing! There is a new death, which implies that he was killed in the internal events of the Gaza Strip and his body was thrown in the Israeli operation to his funeral and announcing that he martyrs killed during clashes with the occupation.

Chamie a resident of neighborhood Khan Younis many accuse him of being behind the murder and assault on Fatah and the security services and is one of the hired killers in the ranks of Hamas and the militias participated in the bloody coup in the Gaza Strip “, according to the sources said.

Citizens in the Gaza Strip, eyewitnesses told Palestine Press News “that Hamas has always followed this method during the events preceding or following an internal liquidation operations in the ranks of the militia hide them and no disturbances in the ranks of its members and the number of dead in concealing internal bloody events.”

This is not the first time that Hamas has been accused of faking martyrs, either.

(crossposted at Elder of Ziyon)

Another day, another terror attack in Israel, with palestinian terrorists killing two Israeli men at the Nahal Oz fuel terminal in the central Gaza Strip.

Two Israeli civilians were shot dead Wednesday afternoon when four Palestinian terrorists infiltrated from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel.

Two other Israelis were wounded in the attack at the filling depot close to the Karni border terminal, near Kibbutz Nahal Oz. The Israeli emergency service Zaka said two Palestinian terrorists had been killed in an exchange of fire with Israeli security forces.

“Terrorists entered Nahal Oz and the fuel depot. They shot at civilians inside. There are two Israelis dead and two wounded,” an IDF spokeswoman said.

Later in the day, a Palestinian sniper shot and lightly wounded an IDF soldier who was carrying out a search near Nahal Oz.

—-

Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack, along with a group linked to the Al-Aqsa Brigades. A spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees said that members of three groups, not including Hamas, infiltrated the crossing.

Israeli Government officials believe Hamas authorized the attack and have promised they will pay the price.

Besides illustrating the palestinian terrorist bloodlust, today’s terror attack is also a stark example of how Israeli goodwill gestures are cynically exploited, and how palestinian terrorists act with scant regard to the plight of their own people. For the Nahal Oz fuel depot provides gas and fuel to the residents of the Gaza Strip (the attack occurred after the latest delivery of fuel funded by the European Union).

Regev [Government spokesman Mark] also said that the attack on a fuel terminal that supplies Gaza with its energy needs “shows the blatant disregard the terrorists have for the well-being of the people of Gaza.”

MK Avigdor Lieberman said that the “terror attack would have been avoided had the government cut itself off from Gaza- in practice, cutting off fuel and electricity supplies to the Strip.” Lieberman added that “Fatah’s involvement [in the attack] forces Israel to see it as a terror organization for all intents and purposes.”

Keep this attack in your mind each time you are confronted with Hamas propaganda photos of palestinians holding candles in the dark of night day.

Call me old school, but restricting the supply of fuel and electricity to people who cynically exploit this supply to murder your civilians is the least we should be doing.

In one of the more bizarre sideshows ever seen in the Middle East, last week Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri scolded Hamas for shooting at Israel “with the blessed Qassam rockets which don’t differentiate between a child and an adult, and moreover, perhaps [don’t differentiate] between the Jews and the Arabs and Muslims working in those colonies or in the streets and markets of Occupied Palestine, even though the Shari’ah forbids their killing.”

Now, Hamas had to defend itself against Al-Qaeda’s charges of wanton terror (and breaking Sharia law), and it came out with an even crazier statement:

Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on Saturday denied it aims at killing Israeli children and women by the rocket it fires from Gaza Strip.

“Hamas doesn’t mean to kill children by its rockets,” spokesman Ismail Radwan told reporters in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. His remarks were in response to al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader Aymanal-Zawahiri who said Hamas’ random rockets kill Jews women and children in violation of Islam law.

But Radwan added that “the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians may involve some killings of children,” blaming the Israeli army on “deliberately killing children, women and destroying houses and mosques.”

Yes, Hamas with a straight face is claiming that their Qassam rockets are not aimed at random women and children of Sderot and other Negev communities. They just have really, really, really bad aim. All those kindergartens and schools that got hit must have caused great anguish among the leaders of Hamas.

A near fatal terrorist attack was averted today, thanks to the quick thinking of one of the targeted victims…and the bad judgment of the terrorist, who learned the hard way that in a game of Rock Scissors Paper Knife Gun, gun usually wins.

An Israeli hitchhiker shot dead a knife-wielding Palestinian in the West Bank on Monday afternoon after the man tried to stab him and a companion as they waited for a ride near the settlement of Shiloh.

An investigation into the incident ascertained that the two hitchers spotted a man running toward them, carrying a knife with a 20-cm blade. One of the two hitchhikers pulled out his personal weapon and shot the man.

Magen David Adom emergency service personnel pronounced the Palestinian dead at the scene.

While this was clearly not a humorous event, and I am extremely thankful that it was the bad guy who was killed, I couldn’t help but visualize this scene after reading the report of the knife-wielding terrorist taking on the Israeli with a gun.

While the media spent time reporting the supposed danger of Rabbis and their religious students plotting revenge after the brutal Merkaz HaRav yeshiva attack (since found to be baseless), the real danger continues.

A Palestinian stabbed a Haredi rabbi in the neck in Arab East Jerusalem on Tuesday, but medical workers said his wounds were light and not life-threatening.

A police spokesman confirmed that the attack, near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City, was politically motivated.

The Zaka emergency service said the rabbi, 49, was walking with a bodyguard in Jerusalem’s walled Old City, where his seminary is located, when he was attacked. The bodyguard gave chase but the attacker escaped, leaving behind a blood-stained knife.

I’m surprised the palestinians haven’t yet come out with a claim the attacker was acting in preemptive self-defense, given the demonization of Rabbis and religious figures in the last week or so.

Meanwhile, a sober warning via Ynetnews:

The Shin Bet security service has recently received seven warnings regarding possible attempts by terror organizations to carry out attacks over the Purim holiday this weekend.

“Any Israeli holiday is a sensitive period, as terror groups’ motivation to launch attacks is especially high during this time,” a senior security official said. “Therefore, the alert level of the entire security establishment will be very high.”

The previously unknown group that claimed responsibility for the Mercaz HaRav massacre calls itself the “Galilee Freedom Battalions-the Martyrs of Imad Mughniyeh.” Many people commented on the second half of their title, wondering if it was a front group for Hezbollah.

We should be more concerned about the first half.

In 1974, the PLO established the “phased plan” to destroy Israel. Even then, the goal was not an independent Palestinian state, but to destroy Israel in stages - to grab whatever territory it can by any means, using it as a platform to grab more - with an independent Palestinian Arab state just a temporary step on the way towards a pan-Arab state:

2. The Palestine Liberation Organization will employ all means, and first and foremost armed struggle, to liberate Palestinian territory and to establish the independent combatant national authority for the people over every part of Palestinian territory that is liberated. This will require further changes being effected in the balance of power in favor of our people and their struggle.

3. The Liberation Organization will struggle against any proposal for a Palestinian entity the price of which is recognition, peace, secure frontiers, renunciation of national rights, and the deprival of our people of their right to return and their right to self-determination on the soil of their homeland.

4. Any step taken towards liberation is a step towards the realization of the Liberation Organization’s strategy of establishing the democratic Palestinian State specified in the resolutions of the previous Palestinian National Councils.

8. Once it is established, the Palestinian national authority will strive to achieve a union of the confrontation countries, with the aim of completing the liberation of all Palestinian territory, and as a step along the road to comprehensive Arab unity.

And immediately after Arafat signed the Oslo Accords in 1993, he told a radio station that the accords

…will be a basis for an independent Palestinian state in accordance with the Palestine National Council resolution issued in 1974… The PNC resolution issued in 1974 calls for the establishment of a national authority on any part of Palestinian soil from which Israel withdraws or which is liberated.

Arafat habitually referred to the 1974 plan during Oslo. This is the basis for the “good cop, bad cop” routine we are seeing between Abbas and Hamas - one trying to grab territory by ostensibly peaceful means, one by war, both with the same ultimate goal that was codified in Cairo in 1974.

Seen in this context, it makes perfect sense that while the PLO now has all Western countries pressuring Israel to withdraw to the Green Line, that the next stage start to be prepared now.

Which brings us back to the “Galilee Freedom Batallions.”

Since the Galilee has a large Arab population, it is the logical place to start the next stage of the Phased Plan. They will start agitating for the Galilee to be a part of Arab Palestine, using terror and incitement of Galilee Arabs. It sounds absurd now but after a decade or so of terror attacks together with left-wing Israelis who are scared to death of a perceived “demographic” threat it will seem much more reasonable in years to come.

This group just released a picture of the murderer in military fatigues, strengthening the claim that they really exist (according to Palestine Today, they claim to admire Hezbollah but not to be associated with it). The point, however, is not whether this group exists or not; it is that all of the terror groups and quasi-governmental bodies work for the same goal using the same methods outlined in 1974.

David Bogner points out how the ardent supporters of our enemies are spinning the premeditated murder of the 8 young yeshiva students last week: by stripping the victims of their presumed innocence. What I call the “but” construct.

David then provides the following example from this blogger:

There can be no justification for the murder of eight Israeli students, studying in the library of their yeshiva.

But an explanation of why now, and why students at a particular yeshiva were selected as targets, could help us understand the seemingly never ending cycle of death in the Middle East.

After reading David’s excellent post, I decided to pay a visit to anti-Israel blogger Richard “the victim” Silverstein, knowing his hatred for innocent victims of Islamic terror. And sure enough, his predictability was manifest:

Before I begin this post I want to make clear that I in no way justify the horrible violence perpetrated at Merkaz Harav by the Palestinian gunman who took eight Israeli lives this past week. But it is instructive to note the reception accorded Ehud Olmert and his education minister, Yuli Tamir, when they attempted to pay a condolence visit at the school.

—-

Lest any people doubt what Merkaz Harav is and believe it is pure house of learning, such effrontery gives the lie to this. The institution is the ideological nursing grounds for the settler movement. And clearly not just any part of the movement but the more extreme elements.

—-

Some might argue that in the aftermath of such horror there are bound to be angry emotions and words. Yes, I understand. But given Israel’s bloody history in which a prime minister has already been assassinated, one has to ask what role the settlers and their enablers are playing.

That’s 2 “but’s.” 3 if you count Silverstein himself.

Update: More moral turpitude from the far Left:

Israeli left-wing activist Tali Fahima, previously convicted of aiding Palestinian militants, paid a consolation visit to the family of the terrorist who gunned down students at a Jerusalem yeshiva last Thursday, killing eight.

“I was with the family and I have no doubt that the State of Israel’s security forces are mainly just inflaming [the situation], and causing the killing of citizens - like those yeshiva students, because of the many years-long policy of occupation,” Fahima told Israel Radio.

Eight yeshiva students between the ages of 15 and 26 were killed in the attack at the Mercaz Harav seminary, and nine others were wounded.

According to Fahima, “I would be happy to visit the families of the murdered [yeshiva students], but if I arrive there they would kill me. I belong to an ethical, humane place.”

Fahima demanded that Israel immediately turn the terrorist’s body over to his family. “Give them their body right now. There is no issue here of siding with the act or not,” she said.

The activist said she does not fear responses in Israel to her visit, noting that “also when I stood as a human shield - they branded me a traitor.”

Fahima plead guilty in December 2005 to maintaining contacts with a foreign agent with the intention of harming state security, and was sentenced to three years in prison.

She was specifically convicted of aiding Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades militants, including the group’s leader in Jenin Zakariya Zubeidi, and was released from Neve Tirzah Prison in January 2007.

Another airborne bacon moment with a Kuwait newspaper publishing a harsh criticism of Thursday’s terror attack at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva.

A Kuwaiti newspaper on Tuesday published unprecedentedly harsh criticism of the terror attack which killed eight students at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva.

“The attack at the yeshiva was a barbaric murder of eight children who were engaged in religious study,” read an op-ed in the daily Al-Watan. “This odious and inhuman terror attack exemplifies the extremist and inhuman path of the terror organizations Hamas and Hizbullah.”

The writer goes on to assert that “the terror attack must prompt the free world to comprehend the magnitude of terrorism and its threats and to realize that a clear and unequivocal stance must be assumed against it. There can be no negotiations with terrorism that indiscriminately aims itself at students, women and babies without any consideration for the means and the targets.”

Contrasting the terror attack with the IDF’s operations in the Gaza Strip, the writer explains that “there is no link between a murderous terrorist act and the inadvertent killing of civilians in response to the firing of rockets by Hamas.”

The piece presented a stark contrast to the main current in the Arab press, which presented almost sweeping praise for the “heroic operation.”

It bears mentioning that this is the second positive sign from Kuwait in a week, with a Kuwaiti analyst coming out in support of an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear reactors a few days ago.

When I read about the young IDF soldiers who have been killed, I am time and time again amazed by their courage and honor.

Take the latest IDF soldier to be killed, Liran Banai.

Guy Banai was one of several mourners who spoke about Liran’s decision to serve in a combat unit - even though, as the son of deaf parents, he was exempt from doing so.

“Your mother and I didn’t want you to go to the army,” said Guy Banai, a member of the Ashkelon deaf association and an active member of the local deaf community. “But you asked us to respect you, so we let you.”

Liran Banai’s 12-year-old brother, Tamir, said that if he could turn the clock back, he would try to convince Liran not to go to the army, and their grandmother said Tamir would not be serving in the military. Banai is also survived by his younger sister, Yamit, who is currently serving in the army.

Banai’s commander also mentioned the choice the deceased made in serving in the elite Givati Brigade.

“You could have gotten an exemption from combat service, but you decided to sacrifice,” said the head of the brigade’s Tzabar Battalion, in which Banai served. “I want to tell you that you were a friend and a fighter of the first degree.”

Other family members also eulogized Banai.

“Liran, you served as our ears and voice,” Gila Banai said. “You had a lot of patience. You never asked us for money, not a word; you treated us only with honor and patience.”

“It’s hard for me to digest that you’re not here,” Banai’s sister, Yamit, said. “I don’t know how I’ll be able to continue without you. You will always remain in my heart.”

A fellow soldier said Banai derived his strength from his family.

“I remember our first conversation,” he said. “You told me about your family, and I still didn’t get the reality you live in. I remember the day-to-day, the constant difficulty you coped with, and the day I met your parents and saw where you get everything from, the resources they gave you at home.”

Keep in mind he was only 20 years old, an age when other Western youth are doing things like studying in university or travelling around the world.

Oh, how G-d is taking the finest.

It was not a response to “Operation Warm Winter.” These sorts of attacks take weeks and often months to plan; according to Ma’an the group that took responsibility claimed that they prepared the attack in “only” 10 days.
It is not only simplistic to assume that each attack is a response to whatever the most recent Israeli attack was, it is wrong. The Arab terrorists have never hurt for excuses to attack the Jews who want to live in what used to be called Palestine; the Danish cartoons would have been just as much of an excuse. The hate always comes first, the reasons come much later.

It was not a sign that a “calm” is over. There never was a calm.

Even though this was the worst terror attack in two years, this is not for lack of trying. Israel catches terrorists and disrupts attacks all the time. There is always an element of luck (or, if you prefer, hashgacha protis) in what attacks are foiled and which get through, and how many victims there would be. Yesterday’s eight could have easily become 40 or they could have been zero; the severity of the outcome does not reflect the desire of the terrorists - to mass-murder as many Jews as possible.

It was not an attack on a symbol of the settler movement. This was an act of opportunity, Palestinian Arabs have been frustrated so many times in so many ways in trying to re-create the daily attack environment that existed in Israel in 2001-2003 (as well as 1929, 1936-9 and 1947-8) that they are not spending time thinking about “symbolism.” An ice cream party or old age home are equally desirable targets for these depraved excuses of human beings and the equally disgusting animals who cheer them on.

It was not a victory for Arabs. Forgetting what the government may or may not do in response, the immediate and inevitable short-term result is going to be Jewish businesses re-evaluating their employment of Israeli Arabs. Just like the 2001 intifada resulted in tens of thousands of West Bank Arabs losing their jobs and the Gaza withdrawal resulted in thousands more, this will result in many Israeli Arabs losing theirs. This has its own dangers for Israel but it is catastrophic for Israeli Arabs.